Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/510

 HEGEL'S CONCEPTION OP NATURE. 509 him a fascinating thought. These three elements are sen- sibility, irritability and reproduction. In sensibility the animal is receptive ; the suggestions that come from each part are transformed by the identity of the subject, it is the universal suffusion of the whole animal as a unity. Its irritability is its reaction against external stimuli, whereby its special character is maintained. In reproduction or self- preservation we have the combination of this universal sensibility and this particular reactiveness to form the indi- viduality of the organism : the animal through feeling and reaction reproduces and preserves itself. The second stage of the idea is the process of assimilation (p. 595), arising from the antagonism of the animal to inor- ganic nature, which it therefore turns to its own uses, renders subservient to its own unity, assimilates : theoretically through the medium of such senses as sight and hearing, practically through other senses. What is here to be en- forced is that the relation of the organism to its environment is not one of causality, but is a life-process in which the result is determined by what the organism is to be. Not in its past only, but in its future also lies the secret of selection. The environment is assimilated only so far as it has in it what is needful for attaining the end of the organism. Lastly comes the relation of the individual organism to its genus (p. 640), and this too has different stages. The individual is after all only an individual, inadequate to ex- press the universal character of the genus. Alone, he imper- fectly attains the end of the genus, and this imperfection implies that the feeling of self be realised by union with another individual, as it is in the relation of the sexes (p. 642). But the result of the union is still simply to perpetuate the genus in individual form at the cost of the lives of the parents. The genus is still unrealised. But the sexual relation is the defect of the individual, because he represents one side, and one only, of the generic idea. In its highest form, however, the relation of genus and individual is ex- hibited in natural death (p. 691). This is due to the dispro- portion of what the individual is and his real self or genus, what he is trying to be. He carries within him from his birth the seed of death, which when it comes is the victory of the type over the individual. From this death of nature arises Spirit. v. Hegel's Totality of view. It will be through some failure in the execution if the foregoing account has not made